Fear Of The Dark Online: Review: Twilight (2008)

Release Date: November 21, 2008
IMDB Site: Here
Buy the Blu-ray or DVD at Amazon

Whether you are a regular reader of Fear of the Dark, or simply one of the deranged Googlers that stumbled upon our site looking for a New Moon torrent, topless photos of Ashley Greene, or confirmation that Robert Pattinson is a pregnant man, you are probably aware that we poke quite a bit o' fun at the silly little Mormon vampire allegory known as Twilight.

Truth be told, none of us had actually even seen Twilight, we just enjoyed the hell out of smack talking what seems to be one of the stupidest vampire stories ever conceived. Our opinions were based on the countless posters of bare chested, pale faced, mouth breathers and the scores of GAP obsessed teens turned emo-vampire douchebags, that we would see walking around the local malls looking like somebody just raped their puppy. One thing was clear though, Twilight is an epidemic... a very, very, annoying epidemic, and it needs to be stopped.

Even my own sister, who once lived a happy life dressing up as Harry Potter characters and engaging in acne popping make-out sessions with her man-teen husband, became infected with Twilight fever. She stopped calling, stopped visiting on holidays, she even gave up LARPing. The only reason we knew she was still alive was by the daily Facebook quizzes she would take, desperately searching for answers to the mind bending question: which Twilight character are you?

For over a year I managed to avoid watching the movie. But one night last week, I decided that I would watch it as research. I wanted to be able to take an informed and educated approach to discussing Twilight's gayness with fans, the same way one might read the bible to discuss god with the cat urine soaked crazies who parade around the city in sandwich boards, preaching Armageddon.

I approached Twilight the safest way I knew how, with my blood and brain filled with alcohol, and an additional six pack by my side. I tried to get my girlfriend to take one for the team and watch it with me, but she called me gay and shoved me and my beer off to my office. I was secretly proud of her resistance, and for the first time in my life, I was happy not to be dating a teenage girl.

My initial impression of Twilight was that it looked absolutely beautiful. The movie is set mostly in Washington, and it definitely did justice to the spectacular Cascade mountains and the cloudy Washington skies. It's really a shame that this was so visually appealing, since the rest of the movie was complete shit.

The story begins when Bella, a perpetual mouth breather with daddy issues, moves from Arizona to Washington. Bella starts school and immediately notices Edward, the "weird" pale faced guy that nobody talks to. She totally wants him to do her hard. Edward, who you don't know is a vampire yet, unless you saw the trailer, read the book, or have an IQ above 40, notices Bella and wants to kill her because she apparently has some sweet ass human blood. At the same time, he is also strangely attracted to her. If you really think about it, I'm pretty sure this is considered bestiality.

A bunch of regular school shit goes by for what seemed like 45 minutes...Then one day, Bella, being super observant, started to wonder wtf the deal is with Edward after he stops a speeding van from crushing her... with his bare ass hands!

Then, after pretty much an hour of nothing happening, Bella is about to get gang raped and everybody watching the movie is psyched that something kick ass is about to happen. I'm totally expecting Edward to swoop in with some Wesley Snipes in Blade meets Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man kind of shit, and totally fuck the would be rapists up. But instead of Edward showing up and kicking some ass, he drives up in a Volvo and tells her to get in.

At this point, I was yelling at my TV. It was like watching one of those episodes of Jerry Springer where some dude is oblivious that his girlfriend is actually a guy, but everybody else in the whole damned world knows. Finally, Bella puts two and two, and two, and two together and asks Edward if he's a vampire. Edward does some crazy acrobat mountain climbing shit and takes Bella up to the top of a mountain, above the clouds. He shows her that vampires don't go in the sun, because their skin is covered in more glitter than a Vegas stripper.

Shit goes on and on and on, nobody gets plowed or eaten, then the movie ends. The vampires don't even eat people, they eat animals, because they are "vegetarian."

I apologize for the synopsis, but that is really how the movie went. It was two hours long, and nothing happened. Between the sparkling vampires who never sleep, the blatant pro-abstinence message, the foreshadowing that all of the Native Americans are actually werewolves, and a completely ridiculous vampire baseball game that ends in a standoff that looks exactly like the gang fight in Michael Jackson's Bad video, I couldn't take a moment of Twilight seriously.

What bothered me most, wasn't the bastardization of the vampire mythos, the terrible acting, frequent lip biting, or the complete lack of violence, but the fact that the entire movie felt like it was slowly setting up the movies that will follow it. What's even worse, it actually makes me want to see New Moon. Not because I care what happens, but just because I need to experience it first hand to see how awful it is. Regardless of why I go see it, it appears that I am simply another casualty of Twilight fever.

Verdict: